“I have never grown up, but I will never stop growing”
-Arthur C. Clarke
Since becoming an assistant professor at the City University of Hong Kong in August 2018, I have begun to pay more attention to the policies in the Greater China region and to trace and make sense of their root causes using the theoretical frameworks stemming from regulatory governance, neo-institutionalism, Chinese politics, and organization theory and behavior. For example, I am currently analyzing the mechanisms and processes through which anti-money laundering (AML), an increasingly used yet largely unknown regulatory and enforcement tool, limits transnational corruption and facilitates international fugitive repatriation and asset recovery for corruption-related crimes. In addition, I am exploring the reasons behind the worldwide skepticism and criticism of China’s high-profile Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Although it seems to promise better policy coordination, unimpeded trade, financial integration, cross-cultural exchange, and economic connectivity, cooperation, and prosperity among the major economies in the Eurasian continent, the BRI is being increasingly perceived by Westerners as either a geopolitical instrument that burdens the participating countries with enormous debt in exchange for their diplomatic allegiance or as a self-interested, state-led strategy to accelerate the pace of RMB internationalization and domestic industrial upgrades. Interestingly, despite the efforts of Chinese governments to justify the market-oriented, multilateral nature of the BRI, the controversies surrounding it show no sign of waning. We must determine the factors that contribute to the perceived “inadmissibility” or “implausibility” of the arguments made by the Chinese government regarding the BRI and if this distrust is related to China’s party-state polity. If these areas remain unexamined, the fate of the BRI will be all but sealed. On this note, I encourage prospective students who are interested in researching both the declining popularity of the BRI outside of China and the effectiveness of China’s financial regulation as it relates to improving the nation’s capacity to govern to contact me via email.
Bo Wen 